Scoring a Retell-Heavy Short Response
Mr. Delgado's third-grade team is scoring a short-response item after reading 'The First Day,' a story about a girl named Aisha who is nervous about starting at a new school. The item reads: 'Why is Aisha nervous before school? Use details from the story to support your answer.' The team uses a three-level school rubric: 2 = a clear answer supported by relevant text evidence; 1 = a partial or vague answer with limited evidence; 0 = off-topic or no evidence. One student writes: 'Aisha is nervous because it is her first day. She does not know anyone. Her mom says it will be okay. Then she meets Mia at the bus stop and they sit together.' The team disagrees: one teacher wants to give 2 because the student names a reason; another wants 1 because the response mostly retells the story. The team has 28 students and 12 responses like this one, so they need a consistent decision rule before scoring the rest.
1. What score should the response receive under the team's rubric? Explain how each part of the student's response affects the score.
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Score 1. The response does contain a relevant reason - 'She does not know anyone' - which explains nervousness. But the answer does not stay focused on the question: 'it is her first day' repeats the prompt's situation without explaining why that causes nervousness, and 'Her mom says it will be okay' and 'she meets Mia' are story events that do not support the reason. Under the rubric, 2 requires a clear answer supported by relevant evidence. Here the evidence is present but is embedded in a retell and is not selected or explained to support the claim. A 1 fits because the student shows partial understanding: one relevant reason appears, but the response is mostly narrative retell and the link between evidence and answer is not clear. Scoring 2 would reward naming a reason without checking whether the evidence actually supports it.
2. Write a one-sentence decision rule the team can apply to the other 12 responses so scoring is consistent.
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Give 2 only when the response states a reason and cites at least one detail that directly explains that reason; give 1 when a reason is present but vague or the evidence is a retell that is not clearly linked; give 0 when the response does not answer why. The rule should force scorers to ask, 'Does the cited detail explain the reason, or does it just happen next in the story?' That test matches the rubric's distinction between relevant evidence and mere retelling.